The more I listen to him speak, the more I feel as if I’m separating from my body. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I’ve never felt this kind of need, this kind of fever, this honeyed heat moving through my blood. I never imagined I could desperately want someone to touch me. All of me.
I never knew I might be willing to beg for it.
“I keep covering for you,” he says to the floor. “I keep taking hits for you. I keep trying to vouch for you. But I can’t do this if you’re not honest with me. I can’t protect you if you keep all these secrets. You once told me you trusted me.” He meets my gaze then, and his eyes are scorched. “Is that still true?”
I’ve gone up in flames.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I whisper. “It was a mistake to say that—”
“Answer the question,” he says angrily, his chest lifting as he breathes. “Do you trust me?”
I can’t feel my hands anymore, only my heartbeat, and I can’t bear to lie to him. My voice catches on the word when I say, finally—
“Yes.”
He exhales, his body releasing tension in a crashing wave. He unclenches his fists only to clench them again, his eyes closing. And then he looks at me with a fire that draws the breath from my body.
“Then I’m going to ask you this once,” he says. “Did you steal the vial?”
33
James
“What?” she says, stunned.
And I know, right away, that she didn’t do it.
Relief leaves me almost unsteady in its wake, and no part of me recovers quickly enough. My heart is pounding so hard it’s painful and distracting and I hate it. Five minutes alone with this girl and my body is wrecked. My pulse can’t decide whether to speed up or stop altogether.
“James,” says Rosabelle, the shock in her voice giving way to panic. “What’s going on? Is the vial missing?”
But I can hardly speak.
I’m feverish with unspent energy, my body holding so tight I’m afraid to move. Frustration and need are choking me. It’s an effort to keep steady. It’s an effort even to look at her right now. “When Nazeera gets back here,” I force out, “I need you to go back to the house.”
“James—”
“I’m serious, Rosabelle. You need to go into hiding and stay put or you’re going to make everything worse—”
“Tell me what’s happening.”
I straighten at the sound of her voice. Rosabelle has gone sharp as an arrow. She looks suddenly lethal, her anger material—and this does nothing to calm me down.
In fact, it reignites my fury.
“I can’t tell you what’s happening,” I hit back. “You’re not entitled to privileged information.”
She steels herself, her chin lifting as she matches my temper. “Don’t do this,” she says. “Don’t make this mistake. You don’t understand the risks—”
“Oh, really? And whose fault is that? You’ve never bothered sharing the risks—”
“I tried,” she argues. “I tried to tell you back at the house but you insisted on taking me to the diner—”
“I was trying to take care of you!”
“I’m trying to take care ofyou!” she shouts back, a tremor moving through her right arm. “But I can’t do that if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
